25th February 2011, 03:05 PM
Is our currency 'knowledge', really? Surely our trade is in ideas and assumptions as well as fallacy and intrigue. Knowledge is something altogether different. And let's face it most of what we produce is boring and mundane even though it is wrapped up in an expensive cloak of pseudo-fact. Don't get me wrong, i think there is good work being done in the commercial world just as there is duff stuff being produced in academia but a lot of what you find published or in the grey literature will not impact on the authodoxy and nobody uses it to interpret our past. The general public, and therefore Despoiler & Co Ltd, will happily sign up and pay for stuff that is presented in a way they can understand and that is exciting and intriguing and it tells them something about how we got to be who we are today. Our box is sufficiently small that we should be able to think outside it surely?